2013: Year of Liberation? (A Cosmic Forecast for the New Year)

As our days of never-ending festival draw sadly to a close, it seems a good time to take a quick peek at the cosmic forecast and what the indicated outlook for the year might be.

It seems, my friends, that it could be the year in which we taste true freedom, if only we are able to identify the right path and follow it.

In examination of the year to come, I am pointed toward the image of the earth. The planet is vast and can nurture all things, and the planet provides the venue in which all things can potentially live in harmony and balance. But the strength and majesty of Earth is of such a nature that it does not create of itself alone, but bears forth offspring through being receptive to the true creativity of seed. We are exhorted in the year to come to follow the example of the earth on which we walk and sleep and drive–listen instead of talking, prepare yourself to be receptive, and accept the fact that sometimes it is proper to follow. In fact, sometimes, the only way to ensure a crash is to insist upon taking the wheel.

This year, it’s going to be a waste of time to try and resist, control, or forcibly alter the fundamental circumstances. Instead, proactively conform to the situation; once the situation contains you, you are in a position to make it more beautiful with your presence. The time is one in which to be guarded, but don’t let that prevent you from making friends and allies, for the earth speaks also of productive mobilization.

The nature of the time, despite much of the window dressing, is one of profound release from bondage. Externally, we’ve finally moved out of the grave danger in which we spent much of 2012. The threats against us are subsiding, and in some instances it’s all of a sudden, like the way an electrical rainstorm can pass through and relieve atmospheric tension in but a moment’s time. Because of these favorable conditions, however, there are certain things which are required of us. In a time in which problems can be solved, we are expected to work to solve them. If the time is favorable to an easing of tensions, it is up to us to forgive differences with others, propose truces, and promote positive relations that don’t linger on the offensive things that anyone else may or may not have done. Liberation is not the kind of thing you want to overdo–you want to take advantage of it, live up to its demands, and attempt to return to a normal danger-free life as soon as possible, whatever that could possibly look like.

There’s no denying that the structures at the center of our world are burning, and that though we may escape the finality of the pyre, we are unlikely to escape entirely unscathed. It’s a big fire. But even as it is converting tower to ash, we have in our hands now the ability to settle controversies in a skillful and sharp manner, and we have successfully built for ourselves effective fortifications against attack and malady. We’re waking up this year and finding ourselves presented with a neatly-wrapped gift–if we simply orient ourselves toward the freedom that we seek, we are able to gain it without hardly trying. We shall find within ourselves a quick-pulsing electricity and simultaneously the ability to remain placid and unmoved on the surface even when plotting and executing feverishly beneath the surface.

So sure, there’s a lot of ugliness going on. There are still so many weaknesses that have the potential to blow the whole thing. There is blight and rot across the land, and a positive financial state of affairs is far from guaranteed. If we are unable to recognize futility when it rears its head, we’ll be like the aging boxer whose boxing-induced brain damage convinces him he’ll win if he gets out there just one last time. Have the presence of mind to know when a path is turning into a dead end, and turn around. It’s also going to be easy for us to fall into the trap of false pleasures, for the sacred intentions with which we are beginning to fall into a profane reality of decomposition and despair.

Even to me, the forecast still sounds rather dangerous, but as a planet passes through different sectors of space in its journey around its sun, so do we collectively and involuntarily move along a larger track. In our current time, our track has truly taken us outside of the worst of the danger, even if the world appears to be falling apart around us. The assurance is that, even if the lingering difficulties wear us down to our meanest and defiant–if impotent–stand, the emerging earth of the new world is rising beneath us to meet us all this time. Good fortune marks the result, with material gain and increased popularity born of that inevitable moment when our feet touch that virgin ground.

It’s looking to be a very interesting year, perhaps not a particularly easy year, and probably–though this is itself a fate-tempting thing to say in writing–a good year.

Hey, I don’t make up the forecast, I just report it. And just like a meteorologist, a wizard doesn’t get fired if he gets it wrong.

I hope you’ve had as much fun celebrating the days of midwinter as I have. I mean that from the bottom of a wizard’s heart.